Will Jackie Healy Rae, bless him, genetically modify Fianna Fail so it could survive in office? As I write this, the politicians continue to dither without any sympathy for the deadlines of a poor columnist, but one thing is abundantly clear: it really doesn't matter.

The Irish Stock Exchange index didn't nosedive on the news.

Indeed, traders were quite occupied with nonpolitical news, thanks very much, as Davy and Goodbody fire "buy" and "sell" orders at each other on behalf of Ryanair and Aer Lingus.

The most relevant coalition question wasn't whether Fianna Fail and the PDs would split up but whether the coalition of Aer Lingus shareholders, government and the ESOT could hang together and find a 'white knight' to stop Ryanair's takeover bid.

It wasn't the percentage of seats but the percentage of shares that mattered last week.

When commentators sat in radio studios on Tuesday, doing colour commentary on Bertie's Dail statement and the subsequent debate in real time, they made no secret of their impatience with the minutiae of parliamentary procedure. George Hook had to be reminded that it was, after all, a parliament and that, just as in a rugby match, the rules matter quite a bit.

Yet the arcana of equity dealings . . . with a 15% tripwire of Aer Lingus shares forcing Ryanair to go public, its offer letter, whether a 27% premium over the IPO price at 2.80 was fair value for the airline, the lingo of 'white knights' . . . seemed to be endlessly fascinating for media and public. On editors' bedside tables appeared dusted-off copies of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. Robert's Rules of Order got tossed into the bonfire.

Why this is so is, in retrospect, as blindingly obvious as the opportunity afforded Ryanair by the low share price set by the government for Aer Lingus.

The current political row has been likened in recent days to the days when Dick Spring walked out on Fianna Fail in 1994. Let's recall where things stood.

The Programme for National Recovery was on the agenda, helping get Ireland off its economic knees.

Unemployment stood at just under 17% in 1994. On Friday, the CSO said unemployment was at 4.4%.

Interest rates rose during 1994, from what an ABNAmro dealer in a year-end roundup article called an "attractive" 6.5% early in the year to 9.5% by the December. The European Central Bank raised interest rates a quarter-point to 3.25% last week.

The percentage of people on the public payroll was much, much higher in 1994 than it is in 2006 . . . not counting the unemployed, discouraged workers or a higher dependency ratio.

Now, our problem is to decide how much cheap eastern European labour to let into the market, and whether or not we can stretch to an extra weekend of shopping in New York.

Eamon Ryan of the Green Party scored the best line of the week when, in the Dail debate on the Ryanair bid for Aer Lingus, he quipped that by the end of the week Michael O'Leary could own more of Aer Lingus than Martin Cullen. The only flaw in Ryan's line of thinking is the imagining that it would be possible, or desirable, for the government to do something about it.